Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 15, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Britain’s population is addicted to mobile phones. At least a quarter of all mobile-phone users of the young generation (under 25 years old) claim themselves to be “dependent”, according to the result of a current study by the London School of Economics and the mobile-phone retailer Carphone Warhouse. In addition, nobody in Europe sends as many SMS as the British. The latest studies by the agency Universal McCann also demonstrate this. The way in which users employ their mobile phones is also most highly developed on the island. In no other country in Europe are high-tech functions used as intensively as in Britain.
In the 25-to-30 age group, 20 percent still stated that they were addicted to their mobile phone. Significantly fewer dependent people are found, however, among those over 35. Only one in 20 respondents agreed in the study that they could not live without their mobile phone. If one compares all these figures with those from Germany, a clear difference emerges. In the Federal Republic, just eight percent of young users under 25 claim that they are addicted to their mobile phone.
“We asked people to what extent the mobile phone is their greatest passion and how dependent on it they feel,” says Carsten Sorenson, one of the study’s authors. Apart from the fact that so many Britons are in an “addiction relationship” with their mobile phone, mobile-phone penetration is relatively low compared with continental Europe. In Britain, there are “only” 1.25 devices per person. In Spain, for example, this figure is significantly higher at 1.45 mobile phones per person.
According to the study, British mobile-phone users are among the most computer-experienced in Europe. In sending images, using mobile videos and downloading from the Internet, they are significantly above average. “Mobile-phone fever is gripping the continent just as much as Britain, but it is happening in different ways,” says Philip Gould, professor at the London School of Economics. It is therefore necessary to adjust to the individual countries in a differentiated way and not to regard as a homogeneous steamroller.
